New Orleans by Dana Tierney

I'd been carrying a torch for a man too long, so one day I flew from New York to New Orleans and sat in the peeling courtyard of the Napoleon House drinking Pimm's Cups and getting patted on the head by an enormous palmetto leaf. I was staying at the Soniat House on Chartres Street, sleeping in a four-poster bed, enjoying the lush solitude in the least lonely city in America.With its lacy architecture and neglected plaster and frolicking drunks being gently ignored by properly dressed snobs, New Orleans is beguiling in its self-love, both alluring to lovers and comforting to the stranger. Its position near the mouth of the wide Mississippi, its pirate, aristocrat, and polyglot founders, its ebullient party atmosphere
and undertow of voodoo, all give it a loose, wild, fragrant, and laughter-filled atmosphere exemplified by the French Quarter, usually considered the city's center.

An easy-to-navigate grid bounded by Canal, North Rampart, and Esplanade streets and the river, the Quarter is where the tourists wander from the courtyard of Pat O'Brien's with plastic containers full of wickedly potent rum drinks, muttering, "Mabel, where the hell's Bourbon Street?" "You're standing on it, honey," she'll say, as they stare pie-eyed at a beautiful boy and girl making out. Bourbon Street gets a bum rap. True, you can find yourself facing an unsmiling Pakistani vendor purveying tubes of grain alcohol, Bud, and thongs, and wondering how your errant sweetheart would look in a T-shirt that says "Hi, I'm a dick and my best friend's a p***y." But if you proceed to Preservation Hall and get a seat on one of the benches, you'll hear jazz legends pouring their souls into trumpets and saxophones, and sway and nod, feeling the pulse of one of America's great artistic achievements all around you.

You can start a morning by sauntering over to the Moonwalk Promenade for a beignet, a cloud of fried dough rolled in powdered sugar, at Café Du Monde, then read the Times-Picayune with a jolt of strong coffee. Then go on over to Jackson Square and check out the stoned, entertainingly belligerent palm and tarot-card readers arrayed under their umbrellas. For about $35, they'll tell you like it is.

Of course, the first question I asked was about my former lover: Should I give it another shot? Through narrowed eyes, my reader glanced at a bench, as if she could see him sitting there, and contemplated the vision. She said, "Anybody who lets his socks fall down like that ain't strong enough for you." It was as if she knew him! Probably all men's socks fall down, but still.

To rub elbows with purest New Orleans royalty, there's Galatoire's, where the grandees line up outside in dresses, coats, and ties for their traditional Friday lunch. But addictive cuisine of all stripes abounds, from the traditionalism of Antoine's (faded glamour; French-Creole) and Dooky Chase (suave Creole; shrimp étouffée and gumbo) to Bayou (nouvelle; succulent garlic soup and grilled shrimp), and even the healthful (but who cares?). As I made my way back to the Soniat House after dinner one night, it began to rain. I was passing the Old Ursuline Convent, when someone tapped my shoulder. "Miss?" I started. (It should be said that New Orleans is not the safest city, and you should be alert.) "What?" I said guardedly, hanging onto my purse.

"My friend here says you're too pretty to talk to him. I agree." Then his tall, blue-eyed friend stepped forward into the drizzle beneath the convent spotlight. My mouth popped open. The first guy continued, "You see, I told you she was."

I started to walk on. "Sorry I bothered you," said Blue Eyes. "You know, just never know." Something in me snapped--because he was right. I handed him my card, and he said, "Wow, I'm honored." He handed me his, and wrote his number at his hotel. "Maybe you'll think about it and give me a call if you'd like to have a drink while you're here."

His card said "Composer." From New York. Well, I'll be damned. A few minutes before, I'd passed a hand-lettered sign in a gris-gris shop that read MERCURY RETROGRADE. MAKE NO DECISIONS 'TIL TUES. Yet perhaps God rewards boldness. I would take a steaming, luxurious bath back at the Soniat House, maybe have some hot cocoa by candlelight. Maybe I would call the blue-eyed guy, I thought shivering. Yes, definitely I would light candles. I was saying all this out loud as I headed away from the convent where they used to lock up single women. But that was OK. New Orleans is a good town for muttering in the rain.

MEET at Tipitina's, 501 Napoleon Avenue, where every Sunday night they have a rip-roaring fais do-do (Cajun family dance), which starts at 5 and ends promptly at 9 so everybody can have dinner and get the kids to bed. But when it starts, the men run across the room and grab the women. Everyone--the chubby, the senile, the teen-agers, children, and shy out-of-towners--dances.

FIGHT inside the Saturn Bar. You'll have had too much to drink by now, but at this place, that's a prerequisite. It used to be an air-conditioner repair shop by day. The end of sanity, of the world. Slug away. Saint Claude Avenue: suitably scary neighborhood.

HIDE & SULK a few paces off Jackson Square, in the Faulkner House, an I-Dream-of-Jeannie's bottle of a shop on Pirate's Alley. Tiny, it's a bit of literary magic, literally inhabited by kindred spirits: William Faulkner (who wrote his first book here), Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty and Thomas Wolfe, Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, and other, younger stars, such as Nancy Lemann, who was mentored by the god known as Walker Percy. The proprietor, Joe DeSalvo, lives upstairs, and if you peer through the glass, you can see an edge of his garden, gargantuan elephant ears and intricate old plantings reined in on trellises, with lovely green-and-white striped garden chairs resting invitingly on cobblestones beside trays of frosted tea.

MAKE UP on a ride on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Delicate glances from far ends of the car shunting through a delicate landscape full of lavender-and pistachio-colored houses, the dapplings of palm trees. Ease your way closer at every stop. Hold hands without looking at one another.

CELEBRATE THE RECONCILIATION with a drink at the Ponchartrain Hotel or, if you're inclined to hipness, at Loa, the bar at International House, a cool new hotel. Then have a slab of red meat at Ruth's Chris Steak House, the one that started it all.

TRULY RECONCILE at the Soniat House or Hotel Maison de Ville. If you're illicitly involved, or just crave true luxe, these are the places. Tiny, plush, antiques-laden, romantic, and, above all, discreet. Very nice, very pricey, worth it.

RECOVER at Commander's Palace in the Garden District with the jazz brunch and turtle soup with a shot of sherry in it. Wear your dark glasses, revel, relax, enjoy the guy setting fire to your bananas tableside. Have an eye-opener and start all over.